Last week, I went over the broad strokes of Time Spiral Block Constructed’s Green/White Tarmogoyf deck. That deck leapt to the forefront of the spotlight at Grand Prix: Montreal, and today I’ll be talking about another deck that got its biggest taste of fame in that same Grand Prix.
The Wild Pair Slivers deck was played at the Block Constructed Pro Tour in Geneva, but it didn’t make a whole lot of noise. The coverage showcased the deck, but more as an oddity that some players had chosen over the "standard" choices like White Weenie, Mono-Red Aggro, and Three- or Four-Color Control. However, when the eventual winner of that Pro Tour left his winning deck behind in favor of the Sliver army (and made Top 8), people really started to take notice.
Creatures (24)
- 1 Mystic Snake
- 4 Wall of Roots
- 4 Gemhide Sliver
- 1 Might Sliver
- 3 Telekinetic Sliver
- 1 Darkheart Sliver
- 4 Dormant Sliver
- 3 Frenetic Sliver
- 1 Reflex Sliver
- 1 Whitemane Lion
- 1 Venser, Shaper Savant
Lands (22)
Spells (14)
A Closer Look
The Engine
4 Wild Pair
4 Wall of Roots
4 Gemhide Sliver
4 Dormant Sliver
3 Telekinetic Sliver
3 Frenetic Sliver
Wild Pair, the deck’s namesake enchantment, is what gives the deck most of its explosive combo power. Untapping with Wild Pair in play will often allow you to drop most of the slivers in you deck into play and then swing for the win. However, the card is by no means necessary when assembling a win. Dormant Sliver is the real combo card; Wild Pair just happens to feed it beautifully. Your goal, with or without Wild Pair in play, is to get a handful of Dormant Slivers into play (protected by Frenetics), and then draw your deck until you get to a winning position. Telekinetic Sliver allows you to lock down either your opponent’s creatures or lands (or both, if you are really going wild), giving you the time you need to craft a winning hand. Both Wall of Roots and Gemhide Sliver allow you to accelerate and color-fix on your way towards your big four-mana spells.
The Bullets
1 Reflex Sliver
1 Might Sliver
1 Darkheart Sliver
1 Whitemane Lion
1 Mystic Snake
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
Each of these cards serves a different purpose, and each is great in certain situations. The Reflex and Might Slivers exist so that you can assemble a real combo finish with Wild Pair. The haste that Reflex grants allows you to tap your slivers for Gemhide mana immediately, which will allow you to pull a large number of men out of your deck at a cheaper price. The Might Sliver then comes in, pumping your whole team so that you can get rid of your Dormant Slivers and swing for the win. Getting rid of the Dormants isn’t a problem; you can either flip a coin from Frenetic Sliver or fetch up Darkheart Sliver and gain some life. Whitemane Lion is another combo enabler, letting you pull as many slivers as you desire out of your deck for 1W each, but he is also useable in the normal Limited format way. If your opponent is pointing a Tendrils of Corruption at a very valuable sliver, feel free to rescue him. You can also use the Lion to reuse Mystic Snake and Venser. These two guys are utility creatures that you can use to stave off a back-breaking Damnation, but more importantly, they are 2/2 utility creatures that you can use to stave off a back-breaking Damnation. With Wild Pair out, Whitemane Lion turns into a 1W counterspell when you need it most.
Matchups
Control – Control decks in the current iteration of this format generally fall into two categories. First up are the more traditional control decks, which pair card selection and board control with permission spells such as Delay and Cancel. On the other side of things are those decks that rely only on the card selection and board control. These decks take the attitude that nothing can happen that they can’t handle, and so they lean on their removal spells and two-for-ones, eventually running the opposing deck out of threats. Because of this strategy, your Foresees and Dormant Slivers are very valuable against both flavors of Control-playing opponents, since they will help you outlast the slew of removal that will be thrown your way.
Counter-less Control decks present a relatively easy target for the Wild Pair deck. They usually have the full boat on Damnations and multiple Tendrils, but without the ability to stop a Telekinetic Sliver from hitting play, they run the risk of never being able to cast their sweeper spells. They will therefore try to break up your plans with targeted removal spells. This makes your most valuable cards Dormant Sliver and Frenetic Sliver. Dormant Sliver will fill your hand with gas, so that after they’ve exhausted their three or four targeted spells, you still have plenty of men left to play. Frenetic Sliver hopes to stop your men from dying in the first place, and if you win the coin flip when they try to Tendrils your Dormant Sliver, you will feel very happy with yourself.
Counterspell Control decks put up a much better fight, though they are certainly still beatable. Many of the rules of thumb laid out above still apply; you are looking to lock their lands down with Telekinetic Sliver, and you are looking to outlast their removal with Dormant and Frenetic Slivers. The fact that you have to fight through counterspells makes your mana acceleration more valuable, since you might find yourself in a position to sneak a Telekinetic under Cancel, and at least you can start hitting their defenses sooner. Your Foresees are more valuable than usual here, since they are juicy counterspell targets that might allow you to trick your opponent into burning a Cancel, and since they will give you extra threats if they make it through.
Your sideboard gives you plenty of ways to really hit control decks. Three Detritivores combo with your Gemhides, Walls, and Relics to take out a large portion of your opponent’s manabase. Extirpates can let you remove key threats, whether we’re talking about actual threats like Aeon Chronicler, or threats to your victory, like Damnation. You have an extra Mystic Snake to punish the slower decks, and you have Vesuva both to give you Black mana and to Wasteland their Urborgs. Note that you will often cast your Extirpate using Black mana that their Urborg gave you, so don’t get too overzealous with the Vesuva.
Aggro – Like the broad Control category, the Aggro category breaks down into two more-defined pieces. What I like to call “big aggro” represents decks like G/R and G/W Goyf. These decks make a handful of large threats, whether we’re talking about a team made of Tarmogoyf, Mystic Enforcer, and Call of the Herd, or a team made of Spectral Force and Bogardan Hellkite. These decks don’t necessarily come out of the gates as fast as White Weenie or Mono-Red Aggro (our “small aggro” decks), but when they hit they hit much harder.
Big Aggro decks are among the most favorable matchups for the Wild Pair deck. Since the real pressure doesn’t begin until turn 3 or 4, you have time to drop your Gemhide Sliver, Wall of Roots, or Coalition Relic. Then, as they start to pound in, you can set up your Telekinetic defense and ride that to victory. G/W Goyf, in particular, has very little in terms of available answers to Wild Pair, so these decks often fall if you can stick your big enchantment. There are some threats, though. Bogardan Hellkite is the biggest issue, since Telekinetic Sliver won’t stop it from killing your team, but something like Calciderm can also be a problem, simply because you can’t tap it down. You also need to stay vigilant against the Kavu Predator decks, since Fiery Justice might buy them the time they need by killing all of your key men, especially if they have the Predator out.
Small Aggro decks are still mostly favorable, but they have some advantages against you that Big Aggro decks don’t. First, they come out much faster. Both White Weenie and Mono-Red can play creatures that are difficult to contain on turns 1, 2, and 3, and Mono-Red can follow that up with a slew of burn. Second, they attack with larger armies. If your goal is to hide behind Telekinetic Sliver, then that is much easier to do when you are facing down a Tarmogoyf and a Mystic Enforcer than it is when you are looking down the barrel at Knight of the Holy Nimbus, Shade of Trokair, Soltari Priest, and two Serra Avengers. A less-obvious third advantage that they have is due to their speed. The Wild Pair deck can produce some awkward draws where things don’t really come together until turn 5 or later, and you don’t have that margin for error against a perfect White Weenie curve. A hand that might be amazing against a Big Aggro deck (something like turn 2 Gemhide, turn 3 Relic, turn 4 Wild Pair, with a couple of slivers in hand) will have you dead on turn 5, right when you’re about to go off.
Sideboarding is generally straightforward. Telekinetic Sliver almost always makes the post-sideboard cut, since he is your main defense in these matchups and you therefore want as many chances to draw one as possible. Riftsweepers come in if you are playing against something like White Weenie with Shade of Trokair, Knight of Sursi, and Duskrider Peregrine. Sliver Legion comes in when your army is under attack from direct damage spells. Teneb and the fourth Frenetic Sliver come in when you’re afraid of losing your combo pieces to removal spells; Teneb will get them back when the removal is successful, and Frenetic will give you a shot at keeping them around without having to do anything at all. To make room, your best bet is cutting the big spells. Unless you fear a specific bomb from your opponent, Mystic Snake, Venser, and Take Possession are all painless to cut, since you would likely not have an opportunity to cast them in the course of a normal game.
Conclusion
The Wild Pair deck is a strange little deck. On the one hand it can produce draws that do nothing until you die, and on the other hand it can produce draws that no deck in the format can stop. Luckily for any potential pilots, the swinginess tends towards the good kind of blowout, so you won’t drop too many games to your own deck. That leaves you with one of the only combo decks that you’ll find in today’s Block Constructed, so if you’re looking for something that shows promise yet is still off the beaten path, Wild Pair might just be the deck for you.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me in the forums, via email, or on AIM.
Benjamin Peebles-Mundy
ben at mundy dot net
SlickPeebles on AIM